Wednesday, February 17, 2010

This morning around 4 AM, as I sat on the couch eating my bowl of Ramen noodles, surfing through the 93450276 channels on cable on my night off from the Evil Empire, I came across my all-time favorite cartoon series, "Gargoyles" on Disney XD. Now, first of all, yeah, I KNOW the series was out from 1994-1997, which made me an adult when it was in its heyday.... and obviously that makes me a bit weird to have my fave cartoon of all-time occurring not when I was a child, but as I am a grown woman (26 years old when I started watching, actually). But hey, if you ever watched the series, you'll understand why I fell in love with the cartoon as an adult. The whole series was geared toward an older demographic rather than the younger set that Disney normally targeted for the morning watching audience. I actually got hooked on it because I always put the TV on Disney in the morning for my son Brandon when he was old enough to watch television (I think he was like a year old or so at the time). Of course, Brandon would find other things to do to occupy his time, like play in the toilet, rip up his daddy's Car and Driver magazines, or eat the dead June-bugs that were stuck in the sliding glass window track.... so I would end up watching the show by myself, with my cup of coffee in hand. From the first time I sat down and viewed my first episode, I was completely addicted to it. It was fascinating, the characters, the story line - I found myself riveted to the TV. I never missed an episode, and was thankful that it went into reruns so I could see the ones from the previous seasons. It was like a soap opera, only in animated form, like Aeon Flux (I watched that a few times back in the day) and kept to a running story line that made it necessary to watch all the airings to know what was going on.

Can you fall in love with a cartoon character? Heck yeah! (Figuratively, people, I'm not a freak.) Goliath was - and still is - the perfect man, just bigger, with wings, a tail, and a loin cloth... and stuff. Tall, dark, handsome in a blue sort of way. Quiet, mysterious, strong, and brave... he is everything that I dreamt of in a man, only in a gargoyle's cartoon body. Of course, he had his flaws - that whole "turning into stone" thing during the daylight hours is kind of a bummer, and you'd need a ladder to dust him. I loved his voice, deep and soothing...even though I do not find Keith David the least bit attractive, the man has a great sound.

Back to my point for the Halloween side of my thought process this morning. I want to rebuild my verion of Goliath, who many of you know passed on to the great landfill in 2008. I really missed his presence in my cemetery this last Halloween. He was like a sentinel, as he should be, watching over the graveyard as I slept, and greeting me when I came home. I miss having him in the dining room during the off-season. He was my first papier mâché prop since elementary school, and the first big project I ever really did, so I was really proud of him. I learned a lot in the process of creating him, and in refinishing him a couple of years later. I know I can make him even better this time. It also helps that I have a much more well-suited man to be my duct-tape dummy victim for the main form this time too. My hunk-o'-beefcake man, Tom, is 6'3" and a giant, so he will be perfect for creating the RIGHT size and proportions for Goliath. The first body for Goliath needed a LOT of work, extra foam added in here and there, to get the proportions right since it was created from two people's bodies - upper body and torso from my ex, who is narrow-shouldered, and the legs were done from a DTD of me from the waist down, so they were too short and needed a lot of work lengthening and bulking up. I hope Tom knows what he's in for with being a DTD victim...

Anyway, that's one of the major props that I would like to accomplish for the 2010 season. It took me 18 days, I think, from start to finish, to create the original version of Goliath. I'm thinking this one may take a bit longer since I don't have all the spare time that I had when I made the first one, but the process itself should be much easier since I know a lot more about how to do it all. Thankfully, I already have all the materials needed to create him too, so all that is left is to get that motivation to git 'r dun!